In A Pandemic, the Cult of Individuality Is Deadly

In A Pandemic, the Cult of Individuality Is Deadly

My pantry is stocked,
but who touched those beans before me?

Our cherished belief in the power of the individual has always led to harmful policies. Will a deadly pandemic be the thing that convinces us we all depend on each other?

If you need to be convinced that the Cult of Individuality exists before we get into how it is worsening the current pandemic, here are a few examples:

Income Inequality: 

Are millions of Americans living in poverty? That is their fault for being stupid or lazy or both. Look, here is one man (Jeff Bezos) who has amassed a fortune of $150 billion. One would think an economic system that is failing half the country would be seen as problematic, but we ignore the example of the millions in poverty and point to the few who have made fortunes as proof that “anyone” can succeed in our system. The working poor could have been wealthy, too, if they had just made better individual choices.

Parenting: 

It starts in infancy. Why do Americans believe in letting babies cry it out, when maternal instincts and research on brain development and the customs of every traditional culture call for comforting a crying infant? Well, babies have to learn to self-soothe. They have to learn to put themselves back to sleep. They cannot be taught to expect someone else to tend to their needs, even if they are only three months old and helpless. Also? We can’t provide paid time off for new parents because, some non-parents say, that’s just rewarding breeders with free vacations. Never mind the importance of thriving children and families to society.

Obesity:

Three examples of things we know but choose to ignore: People who live in walkable communities weigh less. People who live in food deserts weigh more. Our government’s choice to subsidize commodities but not vegetables can make fast food cheaper than a healthy home-cooked meal. But we declare that it’s up to the individual to stay thin, even in a society that is seemingly designed to cause obesity.

College Affordability:

Always, we point to the individual who is the exception to the rule. There’s a crisis in college affordability and young graduates are crippled by student debt? Well, I know of someone who managed to avoid debt, so all the others who are struggling must have made bad choices. 

Blaming the individual instead of the system allows us to walk away from our collective responsibilities to our fellow human beings: It doesn’t take a village to raise a child! It takes parents! And if I can blame your homelessness on your own bad decisions, I don’t have to help you. I can keep all my money for myself. Hey, living under a bridge was your choice, buddy.

The balance of rights and responsibilities of the individual and the larger society is always up for debate. I don’t want to live in an authoritarian regime that subjugates all individual choice. I just want us to recognize that we are all interconnected and to set policies accordingly. 

The pandemic has brought this fact home. Unless you live in an isolated bunker, your health now depends on the health of everyone around you. If you drive through a fast-food place and the person who hands you your order came to work sick because she doesn’t have paid time off, that is now your problem. 

We need to be less afraid of “giving” something to someone who might not “deserve” it. Providing sick pay to a poor worker doesn’t just benefit that worker. It benefits the possibly hundreds of people that sick employee might infect. Providing access to good health care to everyone doesn’t just benefit the individual, either. 

Our president downplayed the danger of the coronavirus for as long as he could, and his followers did as well. You could predict whether social media commenters supported Trump by whether they scoffed at the danger. But, as a friend of mine stated, the virus doesn’t know whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat. The virus doesn’t care if you say you aren’t political at all. The virus also doesn’t particularly care if you are wealthy or poor. We all breathe the same air, and rich and poor alike touch doorknobs and gas nozzles and pharmacy counters. 

If you’re so rich you don’t have to go out in public, because you have people who do that, bear in mind that your people do go out in public. Live in isolation or accept that all of us are human beings sharing the same space and the health and well-being of all of us matters.